


on a wish and a— oh no

by rad_twister



Series: the skybound AU [1]
Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Arguments, Blood and Injury, Gen, Giant Spiders, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, I'm Sorry, Inspirational Speeches, Not Beta Read, Self-Sacrifice, and i thought “...what if??”, cole said “then let him bite you!”, that’s it that’s the fic, the spider frickin’ kills him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25810162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rad_twister/pseuds/rad_twister
Summary: If sacrificing himself is what it takes to be forgiven, then... well, that’s what Jay’s going to do.
Series: the skybound AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122647
Comments: 42
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me: oh yeah i love Jay he’s one of my favorite characters  
> also me, not even one second later: [murders him brutally]

“Haven’t I suffered enough?” Jay whined, brushing away the last bits of spider silk that still clung to him after mistaking a giant web for a hammock. Idiot.

“No!” his three teammates exclaimed, glaring at him as they continued to walk through the mysterious island’s foliage, searching for that blasted Tiger Widow’s nest. 

Jay trailed behind them, feeling worse and worse with every passing second. Guilt ate at his conscience, even worse than the acid in the Toxic Bogs—not to mention the sheer dread he felt at what was to come. A single drop of the venom can kill someone... and they wanted him to get it. 

Just.... that. They wanted him to retrieve a flask of it. Jay had no idea how he was supposed to manage that, and from the way Nya had snapped at him earlier, he didn’t believe he currently held the right to ask for a bit of teamwork or brainstorming. No, they just expected him to waltz into a deadly spider’s nest and extract its equally deadly venom without injuring himself! Were they serious?!

The group stopped once they reached a cliff. “There it is,” Lloyd said as they directed their gazes to a cave, its interior darkened by shadow. “The nest.”

Cold shivers trickled down Jay’s spine. They were serious.

“Well then? What are you waiting for?” Cole gestured for the Blue Ninja to get moving. 

Jay frowned. His heart did some funky backflips in his chest. “Well, I’m sorry if I’m not jumping down there right this instant. Do you see what I’m seeing? Of course not. Because all I see is MY LIFE FLASHING BEFORE ME!” Hundreds of horrible scenarios kept popping up in his head. He couldn’t believe his friends were making him do this.

“ _Now_ are you ready?” Nya asked, impatient. 

By the First, they really _were_ making him go down there. “Whatever happened to sticking together?” Jay tried to appeal to their sense of camaraderie. “What if Nadakhan persuades me to say my final wish? Any number of bad things could easily happen to me alone down there!”

Panic held him tight in its terrible grip. This was it, this had to be his last few minutes left alive, and what little remained of his team regarded him coldly.

Maybe he deserved it. Maybe he deserved how much their stoic expressions made his chest ache. “...I have no friends,” he realized aloud. At least, not anymore. Not one of them moved or opened their mouth to assure him that he did still have friends, that they cared, that a mistake was only a mistake and they’d fix this together. He’d lost them, and the cynic in the back of his mind whispered that he’d lost them for good.

Resigned to his fate, Jay vaulted over the side of the cliff, grabbing a vine to slow his fall until he reached a safe height to drop down to the ground from. Every step spelled his doom, but he walked towards the cave anyway, because that’s what he had to do. This was cruel punishment… but perhaps, if he succeeded, they’d forgive him? It’s wishful thinking. 

Cole’s voice yelled out a last-minute reminder. “Use your canteen to collect the venom!”

“Thank you, Mr. Helpful, but I got this!” Jay called back, thoroughly upset. He wondered if he should also say his goodbyes to the team right now, but decided not to. Saying “goodbye” made it real. Saying “goodbye” made it _forever_.

Ducking under more spider silk—there’s way too much of it around here, and it filled him with unease—Jay stepped into the cave. The air felt cooler than outside by a few degrees, untouched by sunlight.

Every sound he made echoed among the rock walls, and Jay got a sinking feeling like he was being buried alive. “Here, Tiger-Widow.” A nervous laugh forced its way out. “I’ve come to ask nicely for your venom.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the thing could understand him? Jay doubted so, tentatively walking deeper into the crushing darkness, eyes straining to pick out the shapes between the jagged stones. There’s a patch of light up ahead, and he wandered toward it, feeling safer in a place where he could actually see. “I like tigers. Are you a little tiger? Or just a big scaredy-cat, hahaha…” At this point Jay’s talking to himself, and he knew it. 

But what could he say? Talking helped him calm down, and right now his pulse was nothing short of erratic. 

A shadow fell across the patch of light, and Jay turned around, clutching the book his father wrote tight against his chest and letting out a shrill scream of terror. 

“AAAAAH, it’s so BIG!” 

Midnight-black and spotted with vivid red markings, the Tiger Widow loomed above him, staring down at the human with all eight of its way-too-intelligent eyes, hissing at the intruder. Should spiders even hiss?

Jay’s eyes ran over the monster in his utter amazement. Long, black chelicerae, oozing with bright green venom, came way too close to his face for comfort. It lunged at him, and Jay launched himself out of the way, only to hit one of its hairy legs, which kicked him back into place. He tried to run again, but another leg kicked him, sending him to the ground where he landed with a grunt from the hard impact. Ouch.

“HOW DO I GET THE VENOM WHEN HIS FANGS ONLY COME OUT WHEN HE TRIES TO BITE ME?!” Jay shrieked, staring up at the spider above him and near frozen in terror. The spider flinched back at the volume of his words.

He’s hoping the others will come down and save him, because he was gonna die. Oh, no, he was gonna die here alone, never having made up with the others, never fixing his mistakes, never telling them one last time that life had been difficult as a Ninja, but it was good because he’d spent the last few years with them, and that overall they were the closest family he’d had. 

“THEN LET HIM BITE YOU.” 

The closest family…

Jay couldn’t tell if Cole was serious when he said that, and his heart hurt even more—though that could either be because it’s about to beat out of his ribcage, or because he’s grieving the loss of the best friendship he ever had. Tears welled up in his eyes. He couldn’t even muster the energy to make a witty comeback, only yelling the first thing that came to mind. “IF I GET OUT OF HERE, I’M GONNA BITE _YOU_!” 

The Tiger Widow’s leg came hurtling towards him, and the Blue Ninja rolled out of the way mere seconds before getting impaled. 

“If I get out of here,” he repeated, jumping to his feet and desperately trying to avoid the Tiger Widow’s attacks. More thick, viscous venom released from its chelicerae, and Jay shuddered at the sight. “Agh… disgusting! This is not okay!” There was so much of that stuff, and since only a single drop of it could kill him… yikes. If that bite landed where the spider intended, he’d be deader than dead. Super dead. 

It screeched at him, attempting once more to sink its bladelike fangs into the Blue Ninja’s flesh, but Jay blocked with the book, which got stuck. The Tiger Widow shook its body in an effort to dislodge the book, and the paper tore. The book fell to the ground, soaked with venom. 

Jay wondered if his teammates would venture into the cave to retrieve his body so he could get a proper funeral. They probably wouldn’t. “I see the fangs!” he announced, looking around for anything that might help him survive this horrible encounter. Nobody responded. Silence enveloped the cave for a moment before the scraping of the spider’s odd footfalls filled the air again.

...So they left him there, alone in a cave with a giant, ravenous monster. 

The Tiger Widow lifted up at an angle, shooting a strand of heavy silk at the teen, which he dodged, picking up the canteen he’d left on the floor with one hand and shooting a bolt of lightning at the spider. It screamed in pain, the sound lifting the hairs on Jay’s neck and arms. 

More nervous laughter. “Ha, you don’t like that, do you?” he questioned rhetorically.

It responded with another attack, one he wasn’t fortunate enough to avoid. Black spots danced in front of his vision, and Jay groaned. First thing he became aware of:he seemed to have teleported ten feet. Second thing: his head hurt. Third…

Third, he was restrained by the sticky silk, back against the cave’s rock wall, pinned like some sort of butterfly in a collection. It appeared he’d hit his head and blacked out for a few seconds. Oh no.

Oh no!

He wriggled frantically, but that didn’t help at all. The Tiger Widow advanced, its ivory pedipalps—a stark contrast against its obsidian body—reaching up and bumping against his shoulders. Those hideous fangs were mere inches away from Jay, and he screamed again. “HELP! GUYS, PLEASE, I NEED SOME BACK-UP!”

No response.

The Tiger Widow raised its two front legs, waving them in a manner that didn’t seem random so much as it seemed controlled, almost as if it was trying to convey a message in the same way someone might wave flags to signal ships. 

“Huh?” 

Of course it didn’t answer that charmingly intelligent inquiry from Jay, opting instead to close those wicked long legs around the Blue Ninja, pushing itself up to a more vertical angle, exposing its underside, the joint where it’s abdomen connected to the rest of the body, the flat booklungs, the crimson painted markings. Jay closed his eyes, willing his lightning element to erupt from his body and electrocute the eight-legged horror—but it pulled him from the wall, spinning him once, twice, and Jay was dizzy by the time the third spin happened, and…

Okay, he was even more restrained now. Silk cords wrapped tightly around his body, pinning his arms to his sides. Jay whimpered. “Please don’t eat me,” he begged, as if the thing could understand him.

Eight black eyes stared into his soul, and it leaned close. Jay shut his eyes tight, ready to accept his fate, hoping to the First Spinjitzu Master that his friends wouldn’t find his body mangled in this cave, and that they’d leave while the going was good. 

Death would come bravely, at least Jay could assure himself of that. Death would come painfully, but he knew he’d be there to greet it with courage and…

Oh, heck, he didn’t want to die—

It bit him. 

A strangled, wet scream tore from Jay’s throat, his body convulsing under the shock of a foot long chelicera piercing his leg. Deep, deep the fang sunk into his leg, a horrible sound of tearing flesh reaching the Blue Ninja’s ears. Through the haze of adrenaline, he was aware of the feeling of venom releasing into the wound, directly into the bloodstream, where it  _burned like hellfire_. The beastly spider backed off, retracting the fangs, and scuttled off to another corner of the cave to fiddle with who knew what. 

Panicked and panting hard, teeth grinding against each other to hold in another scream, Jay wondered how long he had left. How long he had left, dying alone in a cave, and his friends were probably still angry with him. But maybe he could make things right, before he died. Maybe his friends would forgive him if he helped them one last time. 

It wasn’t too late. Maybe he’d die, but he could still get the venom. There was a ton of it leaking from the gaping hole in his leg, dripping down the blue fabric and from the agonizing wound, where it sluggishly made a path down to his ankle. Twisting uncomfortably in the silk binds, Jay strained, muscles failing more and more with every second. Was his bloodstream on fire? His pulse quickened, the heart beating erratically and bruising his ribs. Tears bubbled up and fell, but it’s not like he had to feel ashamed about that. 

Would it kill him when it reached the heart? Or the brain? Or the lungs? Or perhaps the venom corroded flesh. It sure felt like it. 

The edge of the canteen hit his leg, and Jay winced. “Come on, work,  please ...”

The potent green liquid dribbled into the canteen, but it wasn’t enough. Jay’s vision darkened, and he blinked, fearing the moment when he wouldn’t be able to open his eyes again, when the blink turned into sleep and  that turned into eternity...

Paralysis onset slowly but surely as movement became increasingly difficult. The Tiger Widow returned, chirring softly about lord knew what. With what little time and freedom of movement he had, Jay screw the lid of the canteen shut, the splatter of blood and venom leaking from the lip painting quite an ugly streak down its side. 

Swiftly going blind, Jay mustered the strongest glare he could. Maybe he would’ve said something, but his tongue felt numb, and his throat dry, and waves of pain hit him often enough that he knew that any attempt at talking would fail, and all that would come out was a pathetic cry. He didn’t want his last words to be a whimper. 

The cave got darker and darker, and his limbs got stiff...

The canteen fell to the ground with a sharp metallic clatter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more skybound stuff because i still haven’t watched ns13 and until i do i’m gonna keep writing angst about my favorite seasons  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made myself sad writing this ahaha lmao 
> 
> thank you to all those wonderful people who left comments on the previous chapter! originally, i intended to leave it there. you guys inspired me to write even more emotional pain :D

He’d been in there for quite some time. Almost half an hour. 

Dare she say it, Nya almost considered that mini-battle fun, especially with the witty banter. Not everyone she fought with talked while they dodged each other’s attacks, and it was always a surprise to find herself having a ridiculous conversation with an enemy. She felt that in another world, under different circumstances, Dogshank and her could have been friendly towards one another. Not friends, but _friendly_. She certainly would have been a nice sparring partner.

In the meantime, Cole was mentally patting himself on the back for landing a hit on the Djinn captain. That pirate’s movements were faster than they had any right being… and the feeling of his barely-corporeal fist connecting with Nadakhan’s armor had been way more satisfying than it probably should have been. Or maybe not. The evil baddie had taken his friends; he deserved every single bruise he got.

It perplexed him when Nadakhan backed off for a second, his gaze whipping around and landing on the cave entrance. Either he heard or he saw something that a human couldn’t, and whatever it was clearly distracted him. With a commendably authoritative voice, he ordered Dogshank to follow. The two sky-criminals cut a path through the jungle and headed for the giant spider’s lair.

Lloyd, however, hadn’t been fighting. He saw a jet fly overhead and summoned his dragon to chase after it, which is how he found himself circling over the jungle, keeping an eye on all his teammates, ready to step in and help if they needed it. From a distance he saw the pirates flee from their respective fights, and dissolved the winged-beast into green energy, landing on the vibrant growth of the jungle floor and running to meet up with Cole and Nya. 

“We need to find Jay,” the Green Ninja decided, already pivoting on the spot and running as fast as his legs would carry him. The three of them raced to the cliff’s edge that overlooked the cave. 

Nadakhan threw the spider back with a wave of his hand, and it took even less to kill it, stabbing his sword straight through the eight legged monster’s brain. As he floated further into the cave, the glow coming off his own body lighting the way, he was simultaneously shocked, annoyed, and relieved to find that the Tiger Widow had already gotten to the pesky Blue Ninja. Well, that explained the scream he heard.

He scowled. _A shame._ Only one wish left, and his soul would have been a great addition to his sword… but that soul was far away now. Damn it.

So the Djinn scanned the area around him, letting his hand fall back to his side. There, on the ground, a metallic glint caught his eye. A canteen! Nadakhan picked it up, unscrewing the lid, the pads of his fingers sticking to the bloody lip and sides of the container. It stung just a bit, and he narrowed his eyes, expression darkening when he saw the canteen’s contents.

“Oho, you got close, didn’t you? Dangerously close to succeeding,” he questioned the corpse. No response.

No use wasting anymore time. The pirate captain stepped out into the sunlight, only to have a clash with the Ninja. Slow group, catching up with him just as he made an escape from the island. How’d they ever hope for this plan to work? 

His lackeys protected him, and he teleported far from the Ninja’s reach as soon as he got the chance, holding the flask tight as he made himself comfortable on the jet. In his metaphorical grasp he held the future of his new homeland and the fate of Ninjago, things he had no intention of letting go. It was all coming together nicely, and that sweet taste of revenge and rebirth was already in the air. 

_Worrying_ , Nya thought to herself. The three—no, two—panted and cursed as they watched the jet go up into the air. 

“Shouldn’t we fly after them?” Cole asked, plan-oriented and not out of breath like his _living_ partners.

“No, save your energy.” She straightened and made a point of making eye contact with the Master of Earth. “Nadakhan came out of that cave alone.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd agreed, throwing a doubtful look at the shadowed rocks. “Where’s Jay? We can’t leave without him.”

See, there’s a certain sick feeling that all of them had grown used to feeling ever since taking up the mantle of being Ninjago’s sole protectors against otherworldly or magical threats. It was always there. Every mission, every injury when a fight turns out worse than they’d prepared for, every instance in which they had to split up for an uncomfortably long period of time. It’s that maddening awareness of being mortal, and they all knew it: every mission could be their last.

It’s just that they’d all told themselves over and over that no matter what, it would be okay. Like a mantra, perhaps. _Keep going, we can do this, we’ve got each other’s backs. Ninjago is counting on us. Our families are counting on us. We can do it. It’s going to be okay._

The three stepped into the darkness. 

First spotted was the Tiger Widow, dead. Spindly limbs contorted in its death, almost as if it were still grasping at prey, hungry to stab and bite. Cole shuddered, disgust evident on his countenance. Lloyd made an effort not to look bothered, because strong leaders aren’t scared of harmless dead animals. Nya, while not cringing back in revulsion, did look a little paler than before. 

The sick feeling persisted.

It's too quiet. 

That’s why Nya’s stomach currently twisted itself in knots. It’s too quiet in here. If she knows Jay at all, it’s that he’s never this quiet. 

“Do you think he’s hurt?” Lloyd broke the silence, and with it the paralysis. They moved further into the cave, footsteps echoing off the rocky walls along with the droplets of water from an unseen source, so soft that they’d only ever be heard if the listener held their breath—which the Ninja had been doing, because they were anxious.

“I doubt it,” Cole began, tone forcefully optimistic. “Jay’s smart, he can hold his own. If he’s hurt than he wouldn’t—”

The words died in his throat.

Now his eyes widened and a horrible chill ran down his body as he looked up at the— that was— but—

“Oh, no,” he choked out, vision swimming. 

Nya’s legs gave, and if Lloyd hadn’t been so quick-reflexed then she would’ve dropped to the ground. As it were, the younger boy held on to the Water Ninja tight, keeping her upright for a moment before she could sink to the ground in a much more controlled manner. He went down with her, arms tight around her shaking body. 

“No, no,” Cole kept repeating, stumbling forward and looking his friend up and down. Lifeless.

And it decidedly _wasn’t_ water dripping that he’d heard.

Nausea hit him with all the force of a train, and for once Cole felt glad that he was dead, because otherwise he would have thrown his entire stomach up.

Green and red. Slowly but surely, a puddle formed beneath the bound corpse. His head lolled, chin resting against his unbreathing chest. With the way his veins had darkened, it was strangely reminiscent of that crackling lightning the Blue Ninja wielded.

Collapsed on the cold stone floor, Nya sobbed. Lloyd held her, staring off at a spot on the floor with an expression halfway between furious and hopeless. 

Do you know what it’s like to carry your best friend’s dead body back home? To look into eyes that once could look back into your own, but no longer hold that capability? To hold someone in a hug that they can’t return? To speak so softly, or maybe loudly and angrily, that they shouldn’t have left and that it was so stupid and selfish of them to go and get themself killed?

It’s not that the team wasn’t acquainted with death. Oh, no, they’d experienced it plenty. There was Cole’s mom, and both of the Smith sibling’s parents, and then there was Dr. Julien, and Zane—that one almost ripped the team apart—and so many more. Not to mention Cole himself, even if his death was more of a transformation, because as far as he could tell he didn’t have a body anywhere that was cold and rotting. Zane hadn’t either, no, he just disappeared in a burst of white light, and besides… Android death is a lot different from human death. 

Then there were the deaths the Ninja had caused over the years, as much as they all hated to think about it—things happen in battle, things that none of them could control. Surely many enemies had been crushed under debris, or fallen a fatal height, or bled out from a wound, or experienced countless other ways to lose a life. Casualties of war. 

But Jay…

Jay’s body was cold and blood-drenched. Very much here, very much abandoned of a soul and very much _final_. 

Beside him, Cole could hear Nya muttering to herself, pacing back and forth, wondering about magic. Lloyd quickly told her “No,” a bit too forcefully. “It won’t work. Ghosts can’t return to their own bodies; they only take that which belongs to others.” 

She didn’t look happy about it. In fact, she still had that look in her eye, the one that Cole recognized meant she was plotting.

“We— we need to keep going,” Lloyd rationalized. His eyes were dark, unfocused. “Nadakhan is still on the loose. He can’t win.”

Cole didn’t move his gaze from the dirt. Below him, he felt the earth shift, tectonic plates grinding on their barely noticeable journey beneath the planet’s crust. The Black Ninja’s thoughts swam faster, faster; the ground jerked under his feet.

“...And we can’t let Jay’s death be in vain,” Lloyd added on.

“Whose fault is it anyway?” The Water Ninja bit. 

Cole didn’t like the way she looked at him when she said that. “Oh, you can’t possibly be blaming me for this. You are as guilty as I am! We all made Jay go down alone!”

“And do you remember what you said? When he was begging for our help? You told him to get bit!”

“I didn’t see _you_ rushing down there to help out either!”

“Guys.”

“That’s because I—”

“No, it’s not because of anything. Did you ever even love him?”

“Guys, please.”

“Did _you_?!”

The ocean’s waves hit the beach a bit more forcefully. The ground started to rumble. “I did,” Cole hissed, coldly. His grip tightened around Jay’s limp form. “I _do_.”

“And look how much help that was in the end.”

“GUYS.” Lloyd yelled above their clamor, catching the two elemental masters’ attention. “Don’t fight, please. Jay’s gone, and there’s nothing we can do about that now.”

“But we—”

“No, Nya. He wouldn’t want it, you know that. Let him rest.” He wiped his eyes clear of any tears that threatened to spill, levelling his teammates with a stern gaze. “While Jay may be permanently gone, we still have time to save the others. If we give up now, that’s… that’s just what the enemy wants. We can’t argue right now, because we have to stay strong, and we have to stick together. Alright? We’re going to go out there and finish this, for good. Zane and Kai depend on us. Sensei Wu and Misako depend on us. Ninjago depends on us.” A shaky intake of breath, a shuddered exhale. “It’s what Jay would want us to do.”

And neither of them could argue against that. 

Afterward, Lloyd summoned his dragon to attempt a flight back to the mainland. In the time that he was gone, Cole and Nya hardly spoke a word, not even looking at each other as their gazes wandered across the island they’d been too busy to look at. 

It was about an hour later when Lloyd returned, and it was clear he was fighting off the urge to give up. The landing was rough, and the two helped him stand after he collapsed on the beach. 

“You okay?”

“Did you see any land?”

“No, just water,” he informed them with an exhausted sigh. “I tried to reach the mainland, but it’s too far. We won’t be able to get off this island on our own.”

Cole snickered before he could stop himself.

“What's so funny?” Nya was genuinely perplexed. 

“It’s uh… um. Just thinking about what… what Jay might’ve said about that.”

The team was silent for a moment. 

“It still doesn’t feel real,” he added, quietly.

“I know,” Nya agreed. “The last time I spoke to him, I was so… so mean. I’ll never get to apologize.”

“If you want something bad enough, you find a way to make it happen,” Lloyd muttered to himself, trying hard to focus on escaping this island, rather than grief. They didn’t have time to grieve. He looked out across the endless ocean, at the sunset just dipping down to touch the horizon. “We need to get off this island, somehow. We can find a way to make this right.”

The two caught on to what Lloyd was getting at, or at least they thought they did. They both had very different ideas of what “making it right” looked like. 

“If we can’t fly off this island…” Cole was thinking aloud now, stepping back when one of the waves washed a little too high up on the shore. His gaze wandered to the trees behind them. “...We’ll _build_ our way! I’ve seen enough movies to know it’s possible.”

“And if we’ve built a rocket off an asteroid, how hard is one raft going to—”

“We’re going to take one small _raft_ across an endless sea filled with unknown creatures that wanna eat us?” Nya interrupted her teammate, anxiety clear in her tone.

“What else can we do?”

“What if it doesn’t work? So much could go wrong! Some of us can swim and one of us can’t.” 

They knew the implications of that. Nya didn’t want to lose another friend.

“It’s going to be okay,” Cole told her. “We can do this.”

“...Okay.”

So they started to build a raft. 

Life’s sometimes easy, sometimes not. Of course the plan to build a raft wouldn’t work. How many monsters were hidden on this island? Giant spiders, giant worms… couldn’t they just get a break?

Even the contraption Nya built had gotten jammed when a coconut fell into the wrong place, and they’re left on the gentle nighttime waves, floating farther from the shore. The moon is bright enough to illuminate their surroundings, and it would’ve been serene under different conditions.

“The raft is damaged!” Nya exclaims. To illustrate her point, one of the logs detaches from the raft. 

Cole looks especially terrified, desperately trying to keep his balance while carrying an entire person’s weight. “Oh, no. I can’t touch water!” He wonders why he can’t just… float, like he’s seen other ghosts do before. Second death wouldn’t be imminent that way.

“We’ve gotta get back!” Lloyd looks around him, as if their surroundings would somehow reveal a solution to this problem.

“We’re too far from the shore and there’s no way to steer this thing.”

It only takes a few more seconds for Cole to begin contemplating what to say when he gets to the Departed Realm, wondering if he’ll be able to apologize, when the sound of whirring helicopter blades reaches the team’s ears.

It grows louder, and soon a blinding spotlight is shining down on the team, the water growing choppy under the immense winds as the helicopter lowers itself down. A figure leans out from the open doors of the police-issued rotorcraft, shouting to be heard over the blades. “Anyone need a lift?”

“It’s Ronin!” Lloyd recognizes that voice. 

So… sometimes life supplies miracles. Couldn’t it have used that miracle elsewhere? At another time, another place?

The helicopter hovers lower still, and both Nya and Lloyd jump on, the cool metal of the rails wet from sprayed ocean water. Ronin reaches out a hand to help Cole out, but then realizes the ghost is carrying something. “Come on, Cole!” he urges.

Thank the FSM Cole has superhuman strength, because there’s no way he’d be able to jump otherwise. The force of the jump breaks what little remains of the raft, the scattered logs bobbing in the dark waters. He almost falls backwards before both Nya and Lloyd quickly grab onto him and pull him into the safety of the helicopter’s cabin. 

Ronin is staring pointedly at the limp figure in the ghost’s translucent hold. “Uh, what’s… is he okay?” In the dim lighting, the outlaw can make out a few too many red stains.

The team’s expressions are all he needs to understand what happened.

“...Oh, no.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ✿✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* OOF *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✿


End file.
